Plastic Pallets For Greater Sustainability

“The trend towards sustainable products and manufacturing concepts is especially clear in the logistics field, where plastics and petrochemicals companies have redoubled their efforts to dispense entirely with wooden pallets in the region. According to current surveys, raw materials manufacturers alone in Saudi Arabia require 14 million pallets annually. To produce these from wood, 700,000 trees would be needed, which Saudi Arabia does not have; however, polymer pellets are produced locally. Companies cannot reconcile importing large quantities of wood with their environmental protection commitments, especially when this would also involve treating wood pallets with pesticides and fungicides. By contrast, plastic pallets require no environmentally harmful chemicals; they are neither hygroscopic nor flammable, have no sharp edges and cannot splinter, which makes for simplified customs clearance in many countries.”